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My hope is that by sharing these stories, we can all get to know our community a little better. I feel thankful to have met so many amazing people in the Storm Lake area who are working hard to build better lives. They are truly remarkable, and I believe their stories deserve to be shared. So, here is the sixth:
We often think we know our neighbors. But how well do we really understand the journeys that brought them here? Some stories are full of joy. Others are marked by loss and challenge. All of them can help us see each other with more understanding. It’s easy to believe the struggles we see on TV, or hear about in the news, only happen far away. But many of those same struggles affect people right here in our community.
The details in this story are changed to protect privacy, but the person is real. They might be standing next to you at the store or waiting in line for coffee. My purpose in sharing these stories is to help us connect with, and feel connected to, the people around us. After all, I believe that when we know each other’s stories, it is harder to hate or harm one another.
Our sixth neighbor’s story begins in Storm Lake, where she was born and raised. Even though she grew up here, part of her heart belongs to her parents’ home country. Every year, her family travels back, and she looks forward to these trips. They often go in the winter, when it is warm there and cold here. She laughs and says she does not miss the snow at all.
But the trips mean more than just warm weather. They mean family. They mean hearing and speaking in a language that feels like home. They mean hugs from aunts and uncles, cousins, and relatives she does not get to see every day. Those moments remind her of where her family comes from.
Each year, her family also takes part in a special journey. Some might call it a hike, but it is much more than that. It is a religious pilgrimage. For weeks, people walk through the mountains with very little. Some walk barefoot. Some even walk on their knees. She has seen the pain on their faces and the faith in their hearts. The journey is meant to honor a saint and ask for blessings. It is about sacrifice, hope, and humility. Millions of people take part each year. When she walks with them, she feels small — but also strong.
This year, she will not make that journey. Instead, she is choosing a different path.
Not long ago, her life took a turn she never expected. She left school before finishing high school. One day, she smoked drugs that were mixed with something illicit. After that, things became blurry. Her teacher called the police. She does not remember much, but she remembers enough to know she never wants to feel that way again. The experience left her on probation and filled with regret.
For a while, she worked at a fast-food restaurant while meeting the rules of her probation. The work was hard, and the pay was low. She began to wonder if this would be her life forever; she wanted more for herself.
So, she made a choice.
She learned how to drive, and earned her driver’s license. And then she took a larger step—she went back to school. She is now working toward her high school equivalency diploma. So far, she has completed one of the five required subjects. It is hard work, but with each test she passes she knows she is moving forward.
She does not know exactly what career she wants yet. But she can see she is setting herself up for something greater then where she had been going. She looks forward to completing her high school diploma and exploring new options.
She is our neighbor.
Sarah E. Schoper, Storm Lake
Funny how Republicans are all for the Second Amendment. Then boom, all the sudden it’s, “He’s got a gun, he’s got a gun!” like it’s a bad thing. I’m asking, “Which is it?”
Of the two white U.S. citizens murdered in Minnesota, one was an unarmed woman and one was a man with a gun. The man had the gun legally and was not brandishing it like they LIED ABOUT! You can clearly see that with your own eyes. The man was protecting a woman the ICE agents ASSAULTED and shoved down into the snow. Of the two victims, the woman was shot four times and the man 10 times and that’s not subduing — that’s murder. If those agents are that scared and untrained, they shouldn’t have a gun.
The orange bully dropped the training of ICE agents from six months down to 47 days. Another ego trip. That is a quarter of the time training was before. Don’t you get it? He doesn’t care about protecting people, he just wants thugs on the streets to intimidate.
The orange bully creates a problem and when the American people stand up to try and stop it, he steps in to try to act like a hero if he backs off HIS stupidity. It’s all to distract from his other crimes, like the Epstein files, invading Venezuela (like Putin did Ukraine), Crypto profits and the tariff disaster.
I figured it out. Republicans don’t care if you shoot each other, just don’t bring a gun around their bullies. Yes, their bullies that apparently don’t have to follow the rule of law. Voters wake up NOW. Blue tsunami.
Dave Haynes, Duncombe
Did you watch the nationally televised train wreck, aka State of the Union Address? Understanding that Trump’s overheated rhetoric would result in a mashup of lies, shaming, threats and swagger, I felt guilty, yet compelled to watch, as Trump whipped us into a froth about rampant Democratic election fraud and economic corruption.
When Dems refused to stand when asked to show solidarity with citizens against illegal aliens, Trump heaped shame on them, concentrating his venom on one female Somali legislator from Minnesota.
The old twin ploys of fear and threat came in handy when Trump warned of Iranian nuclear ambitions and missile capability while threatening possible attack (although he had boasted in June that he and Pete Hegseth had obliterated their nuclear program with the precision of a scalpel).
Trump ended his 107 minutes of chaos by repeating the braggadocious assurance with which he began: that we (billionaires) were living in the “Golden Age of America."
Clean-up begins immediately, hopefully boosted by an overwhelming turnout in mid-term elections. Stay alert! Vote!
Karen Heidman, Sioux City
President Trump is at war with the entire globe, either by means of tariffs, or by means of missiles and bombs. Unpopular autocrats like himself go to war primarily to keep themselves in power. War brings out an attraction to evil and to illegitimate power. That is why Benjamin Netanyahu won’t stop warring against Muslims and why Muslim theocrats won’t stop warring against Israel. That is why Vladimir Putin won’t quit war against Ukraine.
Trump is made for staying in power, so he is made for war. He is made for life-long war against women who don’t submit to his advances, war against employees he wants to fire, war against immigrants, war against Democrats, war against environmentalists, war against the federal government, war against universities and foreign students, war against brown- and black-skinned people, war against science and reason, war against God and religion, war against any humanitarian activity designed to feed, house, or lift people, war against Medicaid for the poor and Medicare for the elderly.
Welcome to Donald Trump’s permanent apocalypse of evil.
Kimball Shinkoskey, Woods Cross, Utah
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